In recent years, documents have been read by a scanner or the like, as image data, so as to be computerized and stored in a storage medium. For example, an invention disclosed in Patent Document 1 performs the following processing.
Index information inputted via a UI (user interface) is associated with region information of a computerized document for specifying a region, so as to be stored in an identification region database, for example. The region information indicates a target region when the document for specifying a region is OCRed (see Paragraph [0034] of Patent Document 1). Next, index data is created based on region selection information (such as information regarding a device that reads a target image of the OCR processing), which is inputted via an external UI or system. The region information corresponding to the index data (index information) is selected and obtained from among data stored in the identification region database (see Paragraph [0036] of Patent Document 1). Then, based on the region specified by the region information thus obtained, the document for specifying a region is OCRed.
As described above, in a case where image data is stored in a storage medium in document computerization processing, related information is usually added to image data, so as to search for the image data stored in the storage medium.    [Patent Document 1]    Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-141159 (Tokukai 2007-141159 (published on Jun. 7, 2007))    [Patent Document 2]    International Publication No. WO 06/092957 (published on Sep. 8, 2006)
In a case where several sorts of computerized image data, such as various application documents and contract documents, are stored in a storage medium, for example, there is a demand for a way to search for and extract the same sort of image data together at the same time. In such a case, it is necessary to add related information, which will be a keyword in the search for the image data, to the image data. The manual procedure for adding related information to each image data causes great inconvenience to a user. Meanwhile, as described in Patent Document 1, in a case where related information is created based on the information regarding a device for reading an image, the related information does not include information regarding a sort of the image data. This causes a problem that an accurate search for image data can not be realized.